BERLINERS SEEKING HOLOCAUST CENTER

By STEPHEN KINZER,

Published: August 30, 1993

BERLIN, Aug. 29—
Inspired in part by the recent opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, a group of prominent Germans is pressing for construction of a similar museum here.

Although there are memorials to victims of the Nazi regime in various parts of Germany, and although some concentration camps have been turned into powerfully moving monuments, there is no museum here that fully documents the Nazis' murder of millions of civilians.

"The time has come to present the unimaginable in documentary form," said an appeal signed by more than two dozen politicians, writers, artists, museum directors and theologians. "It would remind us of our responsibility to the victims of the Holocaust, principally Jews but also Gypsies, the politically persecuted, homosexuals and victims of euthanasia. It would recognize a horrible truth and serve as a warning against rising right-wing radicalism."

The signers said they feared that revisionist views discounting the scope and the enormity of Nazi crimes might take hold among young Germans, and that this could lead to "accepting the evil of the Nazi system as relative." 'Pseudo-Scientific Evidence'

"Extreme rightist circles are using pseudo-scientific evidence to spread uncertainty among our youth, and have been partly successful," they said. "That is why it is high time for an exact presentation of the Holocaust."

The appeal was issued this weekend by a human rights group based in Hanover, the Institute for Cultural Research into Peace and Conflict. There was no immediate response from the Government, but the Government is cutting subsidies for cultural institutions as part of an austerity program.

Several signers of the appeal added comments of their own. Barbel Bohley, who was a prominent East German dissident, said that building a Holocaust museum in Germany was "far more important than in America." The writer Gunter Grass said, "It is shameful that such an initiative is being undertaken only now."

A leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party, Gunter Verheugen, said a Holocaust museum would not only be a tool against right-wing extremism, but would serve as a cautionary reminder in "the present effort among political elites to find a new foreign policy role for Germany in the world."

Several other prominent Social Democrats, including a former party leader, Bjorn Engholm, also signed the appeal. Among the other signers were the writers Christoph Hein and Christa Wolf, the film director Margarethe von Trotta and a former East German Prime Minister, Hans Modrow.

In recent decades Germany has proven much more willing to confront its World War II history than Japan. The collective memory of Nazi evil hangs over political life here. No week passes without the broadcast of films or documentaries about the era on German television.

Nonetheless, public agencies have not pushed for large, centrally placed memorials to victims of the Nazis. Berlin officials ordered the former Gestapo headquarters demolished after the war, and citizens who excavated the basement for a museum in the late 1980's faced strong opposition. More recently, city officials rejected a plan to erect plaques along the Kurfurstendamm, a main shopping avenue, recalling the history of Jewish life there. They said the street was already cluttered with too many signs.

"The younger generation, which bears no personal guilt, must face this part of history," said Alfred Bilok, a journalist who signed the appeal. "Otherwise we cannot effectively combat right-wing extremism."